ANTH 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Relativism, Cultural Identity

• School: University of Victoria
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH 100
• Professor: Mc Guire

Document Summary

Culture guides our behavior and interactions with others. We do not innately have a culture in our blood when we are born; we come equipped to learn any culture. Sharing culture means people understand what goes on around them in approximately the same ways. To understand culture, ethnographers go to live amongst the culture they are studying. Ethnography is the written or visual product of that research. Ethnographers seek to understand both the etic and the emic. Ethnographer: a cultural anthropologist who studies a group of people in a field setting. Culture: a shared understanding that shapes thought and guides behavior. Culture is a set of functions, not just a list of attributes and behaviors. That is, anthropologists look to find the causes of those behaviors. Anthropologists also look to find how biological and environmental influences affect our thoughts and behavior.